I just needed to glance at each letter to make sure, although actually I could tell by the handwriting on the envelopes that they weren’t from him. My dear Zoe… Miss Haratounian…Go back to where you came from, bitch… Have you found Jesus?… You smile, but your eyes look sad… Good for you… If you would care to donate to our charity… I feel we have met somewhere… If you’re into S amp;M… I’m writing this from prison… I would like to offer you a word of hard-earned wisdom…

And there it was. Suddenly I could hear my heart beating hard, too fast. My throat felt too narrow to breathe. The handwriting, black italic. I picked up the envelope, which hadn’t been opened. There was a stamp on this one; my address, post code in full. I took a violent swig from the mug, then slid a finger under the flap and tore open the envelope. The letter was short but to the point.

Dear Zoe, I want to see inside you, and then I want to kill you. There is nothing you can do to stop me. Not yet, though. I will write to you again.

I stared at the words until they blurred. My breath was coming in little ragged gasps. Raindrops burst against the windows, slow, heavy summer rain. I jumped to my feet and bumped the sofa over the floor, until it was rammed against the front door. I picked up the phone and dialed Fred’s number with shaky, inept fingers. It rang and rang.

“Yes.” His voice was thick with sleep.

“Fred, Fred, it’s Zoe.”

“Zoe? What time is it, for fuck’s sake?”

“What? I don’t know. Fred, I got another letter.”

“Jesus, Zoe, it’s three thirty.”

“He says he’s going to kill me.”

“Look…”

“Can you come round? I’m scared. I don’t know who else to ask.”

“Zoe, listen.” I could hear him strike a match. “It’s all right.” His voice was gentle but insistent, as if he were talking to a small child who was worried about the dark. “You’re quite safe.” There was a pause. “Look, if you’re really scared, then call the police.”

“Please, Fred. Please.”

“I was asleep, Zoe.” His voice was cold now. “I suggest you try to sleep yourself.”

I gave up then.

“All right.”

“I’ll call you.”

“All right.”

I called the police. I got a man I’d never talked to before who took down all my details with painstaking slowness. I spelled my last name out twice, H for horse and A for apple. Every time I heard a sound, I stiffened and my heart raced. But of course no one could get in. Everything was locked and bolted.

“Hold on a minute, miss.”

I waited, smoked another cigarette. My mouth felt like the inside of an ashtray.

In the end he told me to come into the police station in the morning. I suppose I had wanted policemen to rush around and protect me and sort everything out, but this was all I was going to get. If anything, I was reassured by the tone of dullness and routine in his voice. Things like this happened all the time.

At some point, I fell asleep. When I woke it was nearly seven o’clock. I looked out the window. It had rained heavily in the night, and the downfall had cleaned the road; the leaves on the few plane trees looked less bleached and shriveled, and the sky was actually blue. I’d forgotten about blue.

SEVEN

I got to see more important policemen this time, so that was something. If the officers in uniform who had called round at the flat looked like members of the school rugby team, then the detective who talked to me in the police station looked more a geography teacher. Perhaps a little more smartly dressed than any geography teacher I had had, in a navy blue suit and a sober tie. He was large, heavyset. I mean almost fat. His brown hair was cut short and precise. He introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Aldham.

I wasn’t led to an interview room or anything formal like that. He met me at the reception area and then punched some numbers to open a door to let me through into the real police bit behind. He made a mistake the first time and had to punch in the numbers again, more slowly, with some cursing under his breath. He led me to his desk and sat me down by the side of it, which made me feel even more like an awkward pupil going to see her teacher after school. Or before school, in this case. I had had to phone Pauline to say I’d be in late and she wasn’t pleased about that. It was not a good time, she said to me.

Aldham read the two letters very slowly with a frown of concentration. I spent five minutes fidgeting and staring around the room at people arriving, talking on the phone. A couple of officers were laughing about something I couldn’t hear at the far end of the open-plan office. Aldham looked up.

“Would you like a cup of tea?”

“No thanks.”

“I’m getting one for myself.”

“All right, then.”

“Biscuit?”

“No thanks.”

“I’m having one.”

“It’s a bit early in the morning.”

It was quite a long time before he hustled awkwardly back, the plastic cups almost too hot to hold. He dipped a digestive biscuit into his tea and carefully bit the wet crescent of biscuit.

“So what do you think?”

“What do I think? Well, but I-that’s your job, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. What did the other letter say?”

“It was horrible so I threw it away. It had some weird stuff about what I ate. And there was something about being afraid of dying. It sounded as if it was someone who had been spying on me.”

“Or somebody who knows you?”

“Knows me?”

“It might be a joke. Don’t you think you might have some friend who’s doing this for a laugh?”

I hardly knew what to say.

“Someone’s threatening to kill me. I don’t see any joke.”

Aldham shifted uneasily in his chair.

“People have a funny sense of humor,” he said. There was a silence. I was thinking desperately: Could I just be wrong about this? Maybe it was nothing to make a fuss about. “Hang on a moment,” he said at last. “Let me have a word with someone.”

He took a folder out of his desk and inserted the two letters. He took that and his tea and walked heavily across the room and out of my sight. I looked at my watch. How long was this going to take? Was it worth getting my own files out of my bag and doing some work on the corner of Aldham’s desk? I wasn’t quite in the mood. When Aldham finally returned, he was with another man in a suit. He was a smaller, slighter man, graying, who looked as if he was a bit farther up the food chain. He introduced himself as Detective Inspector Carthy.

“I’ve looked at your letters, Miss… er…” he mumbled something that was apparently an attempt at my name. “I’ve looked at the letters and DS Aldham has filled me in on the details of the case. These are certainly nasty pieces of work.” He looked around and pulled a chair over from an unattended desk. “The question is, What’s actually going on here?”

“What’s going on is that somebody is threatening me and they’ve broken into my flat.” Carthy grimaced. “And I’m being harassed. That’s a crime now, isn’t it?”

“In certain circumstances. We have every sympathy for your concern,” he said. “But it’s difficult to know how to proceed exactly.”

“Don’t you think this person sounds dangerous?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Look, miss, I understand you’ve had other mail of this kind.”

I gave yet another recapitulation of my moment of fame, and the two detectives exchanged a brief smile.

“The melon thing?” Carthy said. “That was great. We’ve got the newspaper photo on a notice board somewhere. Everyone thinks you’re a heroine here. Maybe you could go and say hello to some of them before you go. But about the letters: I reckon that in all probability this is just the sort of thing that happens when you become a celebrity. There are sad people out there. This is their way of meeting people.”

I finally lost patience.